"No, hang it all," said Peter; "there's nothing to smile about, Arnold,
I've pretty well got to the end of my tether."
"Meaning what exactly?" queried the other.
"Oh, well, you know enough already to guess the rest…. Look here, Arnold, you and. I are fairly good pals now, I'd just like to tell you exactly what I feel."
"Sit down then, man, and get it out. There's a chair yonder, and you've got the forenoon before ye. I'm a heretic and all that sort of thing, of course, but perhaps that'll make it easier. I take it it's a kind of heretic you're becoming yourself."
Peter pulled up a chair and got out his own pipe. "Arnold," he said, "I'm too serious to joke, and I don't know that I'm even a Christian heretic. I don't know what I am and where I stand. I wish I did; I wish I even knew how much I disbelieved, for then I'd know what to do. But it's not that my dogmas have been attacked and weakened. I've no new light on the Apostles' Creed and no fresh doubts about it. I could still argue for the Virgin Birth of Christ and the Trinity, and so on. But it's worse than that. I feel …" He broke off abruptly and pulled at his pipe. The other said nothing. They were friends enough by now to understand each other. In a little while the younger man found the words he wanted.
"Look here, it's like this. I remember once, on the East Coast, coming across a stone breakwater high and dry in a field half a mile from the sea. There was nothing the matter with the breakwater, and it served admirably for certain purposes—a seat, for instance, or a shady place for a picnic. But it was no longer of any vital use in the world, for the sea had receded and left it there. Now, that's just what I feel. I had a religion; I suppose it had its weaknesses and its faults; but most of it was good sound stone, and it certainly had served. But it serves no longer, not because it's damaged, but because the need for it has changed its nature or is no longer there." He trailed off into silence and stopped.
Arnold stirred to get out his pouch. "The sea is shifty, though," he said. "If they keep the breakwater in decent repair, it'll come in handy again."
"Yes," burst out Peter. "But, of course, that's where illustrations are so little good: you can't press them. And in any case no engineer worth his salt would sit down by his breakwater and smoke a pipe till the sea came in handy again. His job is to go after it."
"True for ye, boy. But if the old plan was so good, why not go down to the beach and get on with building operations of the same sort?"
"Arnold," said Peter, "you couldn't have put it better. That's exactly what I came here to do. I knew in London that the sea was receding to some extent, and I thought that there was a jolly good chance to get up with it again out here. But that leads straight to my second problem: I can't build on the old plan, and it doesn't seem any good. It's as if our engineer found quicksands that wouldn't hold his stone, and cross-currents that smashed up all his piles…. I mean, I thought I knew what would save souls. But I find that I can't because my methods are—I don't know, faulty perhaps, out of date maybe possibly worse; and, what is more, the souls don't want my saving. The Lord knows they want something; I can see that fast enough, but what it is I don't know. Heavens! I remember preaching in the beginning of the war from the text 'Jesus had compassion on the multitude.' Well I don't feel that He has changed, and I'm quite sure He still has compassion, but the multitude doesn't want it. I was wrong about the crowd. It's nothing like what I imagined. The crowd isn't interested in Jesus any more. It doesn't believe in Him. It's a different sort of crowd altogether from the one He led."